Gender differences in the academic career of economics in Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, we study the underrepresentation of women in economics in Brazil by analysing the evolution of their academic careers and their participation in two leading national economics conferences. To depict the path of women in the profession, we use novel data collected from annual surveys carried out by the Brazilian Women in Economics research group, data from the ANPEC exam, the unified admission exam for graduate programmes in economics and secondary data provided by the two main economics associations in Brazil. We find that it is more difficult for women to progress to tenure, and, therefore, there are “leaks in the academic career pipeline”. There are also persistent gender differences in the choice of research fields, as women mostly research on applied microeconomics.

Keywords

• gender
• academic career
• conferences
• economics
• Brazil